The invention relates generally to a system, apparatus and method for forensically approximating facial characteristics, and more particularly to a computer-based system, apparatus and method for forensic facial approximation.
For more than one century, facial reconstruction has been used to recreate the appearance of a person's face based on a discovered skull. The field of facial reconstruction is divided into three main classes, namely facial restoration, superimposition, and facial approximation. Forensic facial restoration is used to create a lifelike representation of an unidentified individual whose face has been mutilated or decomposed, but for which much of the soft tissues and bone are available. Superimposition seeks to determine whether, given a photograph of an individual, a questioned skull is a sufficient match for the depicted face. The skull is overlaid with a transparency of the photograph, and anatomical landmarks on the skull and the photograph are compared to confirm or rule out a possible match.
Forensic facial approximation is the building of a three-dimensional model of the face from a skull or skull replica when there is no direct information about the original form of the face. Three-dimensional facial approximation can be traced back to the latter half of the nineteenth century. The earliest three-dimensional facial approximations were accomplished by measuring the thickness of the soft tissue at various positions on the faces of cadavers. Using the average of these values, a technique was developed for building a facial approximation on a skull. Several researchers have created general tissue depth tables. Further, tissue depth tables for various races have been created.
Researchers have more recently adapted facial approximation techniques to the computer. One researcher has developed a three-dimensional reconstruction system using a color laser scanner to digitize an unknown skull, a user interface to add average tissue depths, and a color laser scanner to digitize and add facial features.
Many of the computer-based approaches work directly on either volumetric or CT images or work from polygonal models derived from CT data or obtained directly from a range sensor.
Forensic facial reconstruction has two conflicting constraints. A reconstruction must contain sufficient detail for the face to be recognizable, but must not inject detail where detail does not exist.